Scaling buildings in a City map

[Tonnichiwa]

I've got a few questions for those of you who love to make city maps.

What method do you use to make sure the buildings you make all stay in scale with each other? And how do you scale your city to make sure it is not too large or too small?

Thanks for any replies.

[Mouse]

In CC3 (I've not tried making a city with any other software yet), I generally stick to the default scale of the city symbols. That's '1' by default. That way all the buildings are in scale with each other. If the map turns out to be too small I simply make the map area bigger.

Where buildings created with the HOUSE command are concerned, I generally paste a few temporary building symbols around the place first to give me a general idea to work with as I'm creating them, then remove the temporary buildings when I'm done.

It also helps to have a grid visible, so that you can see if you are making a building that is less than 5 foot wide, or whatever.

Hope that helps

[Tonnichiwa]

Thanks Sue, I wanted to see how other people do it because I have seen some maps with some truly grand scale houses. And I was wondering how they keep that in scale on a map that doesn't automatically figure it out for you.

The reason I wonder about these things is because I wonder how people build a house, then add dormers to it, and not have the house five feet wide with two foot dormers. How do they make them look like the dormers and add-on's to the house are not out of scale?

[Falconius]

Literally use a scale. On paper I use a ruler to measure widths and stuff. I keep it simple 1 mm to 1 meter or 1 cm to 1 meter or on graph paper 1 cube to one meter. In Blender you have a scale setting and I have mine set to metric so one blender square equals 1 meter. The problem I encounter is mentally realizing how big one meter actually is, so I have a yard stick I refer to when I forget doors are only like 70 cm wide and not a meter wide. More abstract measurements like how tall a building is or how long a pool is and how big they would appear in real life are more difficult, so when I go for a walk or whatever I try to visually measure buildings and guess how many meters tall they are etc. If I want to know how wide a dormer would be I'd say ok I think this dormer would be a meter and a half wide then use the ruler to measure our 1.5 mm (or 15 mm if I'm using cm to m) or in blender I just make the thing actually 1.5 meters.

[Mouse]

I have made my own building set for CD3 - a sort of lego set made up of lots of different parts. Trying to get that in scale was pretty difficult, but again, I opened up a few of the existing standard set pngs and made mine the same size as them. That way I was also able to scale the tiles on the roofs, the size of the chimneys, and the width of the ridge tiles and so on

I think a lot of the hand drawn buildings are judged by eye, bearing in mind the comparative scale of the adjacent buildings, or the trees and roads

[Mark Oliva]

What method do you use to make sure the buildings you make all stay in scale with each other?

As far as I know, you use only CC3+ and add-ons. A key to having right-scale symbols in CD3 maps is the physical resolution of the VH (very high resolution) symbol. To have things work right, the VH symbol has to be at a resolution of 40 pixels = 1 scale foot. If you're making the symbols yourself, you should choose this resolution.

Unfortunately, if you use imported third party symbols, this isn't always possible. The next CC3+/CD3 resolution is HI (high), at 16 Pixels = 1 foot. If you have imported third-party symbols that have a lower resolution than the VH 40 Pixels = 1 foot, then you may have to load the PNG into a graphic program and resize it so that PNG has a size of 16 pixels = 1 scale foot. After that, you can use the CC3+ import function, importing only to the resolutions of HI, LO and VL.

To determine what size the imported symbols should be, take the maximum dimension in feet and multiply by 40 for VH or, when that isn't possible because the original is too small, multiply by 16 for HI.

And how do you scale your city to make sure it is not too large or too small?

I don't think I'm understanding this question correctly. One answer would be to make sure that the symbols all are at the same scale. But you also might be asking how big the city itself should be, although I suspect not. If you are, it would seem to me that the city should be as big as it is.

The reason I wonder about these things is because I wonder how people build a house, then add dormers to it, and not have the house five feet wide with two foot dormers. How do they make them look like the dormers and add-on's to the house are not out of scale?

It's important to make or import the symbols for dormers and other structural add-ons at the same pixel resolution setting as the base symbols have.

[Tonnichiwa]

Thanks everyone. I haven't really asked the question for learning how to scale them myself, but because I have seen some people on places like Deviant Art that have drawn city maps using a grid and the buildings are still out of scale. So for instance, one guy made a normal peasant hut almost 60 feet wide and about 100 feet long with ten foot wide doorways and only two foot wide Dormers. There were like six dormers on the place. So I thought to myself "peasant hut? Really? that place is a bit big to be calling it a hut, and I doubt a peasant could afford a place like that, and it seems to be out of scale."

So I thought I would ask around to those with knowledge of how it is made by hand and what methods are used to make sure all of your houses, dormers, doors, and extensions are not out of scale.